New book of award-winning poems released

April 21, 2003

KALAMAZOO -- Western Michigan University's Patricia Jabbeh
Wesley doesn't have to watch television or pick up a newspaper
to learn about war. That's because the Liberian-born poet and
former refugee knows first-hand how affects families, how it
destroys communities and how hard it is to achieve peace of mind,
even after the fighting stops.

"Becoming Ebony," her latest book of poems, lends
voice to Wesley's experiences as a child growing up in her beloved
Monrovia, as a desperate refugee in one of the area's notorious
torture camps, and as an emigrant wife and mother easing her
family into life in America. Wesley is a WMU assistant professor
of English.

The collection, published by Crab Orchard Review and Southern
Illinois University Press, won second place in the 2002 Crab
Orchard Award Series in poetry and was published this year as
part of the award. The new volume of verse is Wesley's second
published work. Her first book, "Before the Palm Could Bloom:
Poems of Africa," in 1998. A third book of poems, "In
the Ruined City," is being completed.

Critics have praised "Becoming Ebony" for presenting
readers with the often brutal and tragic truth associated with
life in a war-torn society, while offering powerful examples
of beauty, strength and triumph in the face of death, heartache
and despair.

"'Becoming Ebony' is in many respects a memoir of the
life she lost when she was forced to flee Liberia because of
the war," said Tim Seibles, a judge in the Crab Orchard
Awards competition. "Naturally, a longing for family and
the familiarity of home permeates this book. However, this is
not simply a poetry of mourning or an excursion into some wistful
fantasy of an African life. We are given a complex view of a
society that was unmade by political convulsion and the resulting
violence."

The author of hundreds of poems, Wesley earned her doctoral
degree from WMU in 2002 and now teaches creative writing and
African Literature. She is a member of the Liberian Studies Association,
African Studies Association and African Literature Association,
and has organized writing workshops and multicultural programs
designed for children at the elementary level. She also has worked
as a writing specialist and multicultural program director in
many schools throughout West Michigan, and was a teacher and
school principal in Liberia.

For more information about "Becoming Ebony," contact
Jane Carlson of Southern Illinois University Press at (618) 453-6633
or <jcarlson@siu.edu>.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley can be reached at (269) 387-2629 or <pjabbeh@juno.com>.